


Are they so heartless?

by Turwaithion



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angband, Angst, Complete, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Thangorodrim, implied angbang, old timey english sometimes, sorry i wrote this on a typewriter and got possessed by an old man from the early 1900s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27934797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turwaithion/pseuds/Turwaithion
Summary: We don't get any details about Maedhros' capture, so I wrote some. There's a little bit of implied Angbang, but nothing explicit.
Relationships: Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	Are they so heartless?

An elf was dragged in, stripped nearly naked and bound by many chains; yet beneath the blood and grime still fresh from the battlefield Morgoth recognized him as kin of Fëanor. There was a fire about him, not only in his hair—famously red hair, slicked back though it was with sweat and orcish gore—but in the proud step; the frigid eyes of sharp grey that threatened the Vala with violence for the mere act of looking upon him, much less binding him like a criminal. Morgoth smiled. In the flash of those eyes he was gifted fond memories, and for a moment he almost missed that dreadful personality of Fëanor’s. The elf had had a certain amusing vigor to him while he was alive.

His son, it seemed, would be no different.

“My lord,” announced Sauron, great pride blazoned on his face, “may I present King Nelyafinwë of the Noldor, to be judged as you see fit.”

“A magnificent gift to be sure, and a rare one to take alive,” Morgoth mused, rising from his throne and lilting to the place where Nelyafinwë stood haughty and fierce between the Balrogs. “What for have ye given him such fierce guardians?” Morgoth continued, “Surely he needs not such as this? Is he a Maia disguised, perhaps, or even one of my own kin the Ainur?”

“We had assigned him orcish guard, my lord,” Sauron said a low, silky tone he usually reserved for another time and place—as if trying to draw any incoming wrath away from himself, “but I felt that these were perhaps a more fitting match.”

“And why, pray tell, did ye have this change of heart?”

The Maia glanced at the elf with a certain wariness that amused Morgoth greatly. “He killed the others.”

“Did he?” Morgoth ran one dissonant hand down the elf’s arm in a languid gesture, watching as dried blood flaked and crackled to the floor. Nelyafinwë’s violent eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but he remained silent. “How?”

“I did not see, I was attending other matters.”

A brazen lie, and Morgoth knew it. “Put ye not a brace between his arms, as he has now?”

“We did, aye, but he must have used it against them. He is crafty, it would seem.”

“And so it would!” He struck the elf across the brow in a motion Sauron clearly thought had been intended for him, and watched with great pleasure as his lieutenant flinched and the elf fell wordless to the ground, silent and fuming like an oncoming storm. “Crafty, aye, but not without fault to his reason.” He leapt back upon his throne, steps humming with the sound of many voices. “Send word to his brothers. Give them news of our prize and let us see if they value his life above the weight of these jewels in my crown, or if they carry with them the same mind as their father’s, and his folly.”

“What is the ransom I shall set, then?” Sauron took the kneeling elf by the hair to lift his eyes to Morgoth. In a flash of movement that Morgoth nearly missed for its subtlety and deftness Nelyafinwë twisted and snapped at Sauron’s arm, missing him by a breath only thanks to the Maia’s quick reflexes in letting go.

Morgoth smiled. This one would be fun to break. “That they henceforth forfeit their foolish quest to reclaim these, my silmarils, and I shall set their brother free.”

A cold laugh filled the room; rising neither from either the Vala or the Maia but from the chained creature on his knees before them. His fiery head was thrown back in bitter mockery of triumph, and he bared his teeth like a caged wild beast.

“They will not pander to ye,” he said at last in a voice like death, his laughter spent. “We swore an oath, and by it we stand.”

“Do they not love thee?” Morgoth tsked, chuckling. “A heartless lot indeed.”

“Heartless,” Nelyafinwë echoed, eyes dark. “Nay, not heartless. But neither are they stupid. They know as soon as ye get what ye will of them I am good as dead, and my head nothing but an ornament for one of your orcish captain’s pikes.”

Sauron looked betwixt them, and for a breath felt as though he saw a mighty darkness presented before a great star, a heavy consuming darkness with three pale lights at its helm standing before a much smaller but deadly harsh light, a flame greater than the Trees or the jewels or any forge of Aulë. It was not a holy light, though it once may have been, but it was a fierce and consuming light, and if Sauron was not a Maia as he was, he would have felt afraid. “Morgoth?”

“Send the missive as I have spoken it,” spake Morgoth, in a choir of many dissonant voices. “I will to see if his brothers are as cold as he says.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please, please tell me you pictured Sauron looking at Maedhros like one might look at a surprise bathroom centipede--like, you know that you have more power than the centipede, but you're still gonna scream if it comes running at you--please it's the funniest mental image to me


End file.
